Julie's night had gone rather well, though she did dearly wish that she could have gotten more time to talk with Eric. Her homework project with Arthur had taken longer than expected and by the time she was able to get to talking to Eric her father called her to bed, and while a real part of her yearned to have Eric by her side and tell him how excited she was to have a younger sibling on the way and assure him that things would be better homework wise in the future, but she wasn't going start some "teenage rebellion" over Skype and bedtimes. In this, she said her good nights and got ready for bed.
Her thoughts and her dreams seemed to focus more on her mother's pregnancy and they seemed to go through various ideas, images, and flashes in which Julie got to lift up a crying infant and snuggle it before passing the baby on to her mother. In one the baby was a male and in another the baby was female, though Julie liked both. One dream even had her holding her new baby sibling with Eric next to her holding her shoulder and they mouthed the words "the future" to each other. She liked that dream the best, and it brought a smile to her face, even as her alarm clock went off, signaling the start of a new day.
Julie gave a small yawn as she woke up and smiled as she remembered her dream and then reached over to her alarm clock to turn off the alarm. She rolled out of bed and was quick to get ready. She dressed herself in something comfortable and soft. As she pulled her shirt on, she soon heard a voice outside her bedroom. It was her mother speaking softly.
"Julie, are you up?" her mother called from outside the door.
"Yeah, mom, I'm up," Julie answered her mother, who was making sure that she was up and ready and didn't just turn the alarm off to go back to sleep.
"Okay then," Melissa Stovall answered from outside the doorway, "just remember to stay on task..."
"I am, mom, don't worry," Julie answered and gave a small chuckle.
Julie then turned back toward the small end table beside her bed. Sitting there beside her alarm clock was a small plastic jewelry stand which held her most prized possession. It was the pearl necklace that Eric had given her. His original idea may have been along the lines of a sort of "promise ring" before they'd had their magical first time together, but as he gained the instinctive knowledge on weremers, which reflected how many new weres seemed to understand many of the instincts and concepts about their kind of were after joining were society, he offered it to Julie as a promise to be with her forever. It left Julie unbelievably happy and she wasn't about lose that pearl necklace.
Which was why it was presently on a small plastic jewelry stand. It played to something that had happened when she was younger. She'd had a necklace that had a small gold colored image of a fish in a swimming pose, and Julie remembered wearing that necklace everywhere and that included in bed at night. Then one morning when she woke up, she'd found that the necklace wasn't on her and she couldn't find it. It frustrated her heavily, especially as she was soon pressed for time and couldn't look until she found it. Eventually the necklace was found under her bed and she realized that she must have turned and rolled in her sleep and somehow the necklace had fallen off and ended up on the floor. Not losing that necklace permanently was a relief, but it did provide Julie with a lesson and one she would stick regarding her pearl necklace. That was far more important as it represented centuries of happiness with Eric.
She quickly slipped on the necklace and made sure the pearl was visible, as she'd found that when she went to bed the previous night, she'd been disappointed to discover that the pearl had been hidden under the rest of her clothing. She wasn't going to let that happen again, and with the pearl visible and being fully dressed, she made her way downstairs to get her breakfast. She found her parents already seated and going through their own breakfast, though she also noted that her father was seated a bit closer to her mother than normal, which made sense. Her mom was pregnant and her father would want to be with the woman he loved.
"Sleep well?" Martin Stovall asked his daughter.
"Yes... though I wish getting my homework done could have been easier than it was," Julie managed to answer her father.
Martin detected the sigh at the end of Julie's sentence and watched as she looked down for a moment while she began to eat her cereal. He soon guessed where her mind was focused at the moment. In a way it made him smile as it reminded him of his courtship with Melissa, even with the parental worries over the fact that Julie had met Eric while she was fourteen and he first met Melissa while he was in college.
"I know it can be rough... but you're still young and you'll need to keep your prime focus on your school work," Martin reminded, "and hopefully you'll have more time to talk with Eric today."
"I hope so," Julie nodded and ate her breakfast.
"I can take you into school today, Julie," Melissa said to Julie, "there's no need to wolf your food down."
"I'd just like to be a bit early," Julie answered, "Maybe see Eric before we have to go to class... since we don't have a class together."
Melissa and Martin gave a small chuckle as Julie resumed eating. The two of them resumed eating as well, as they would have their own things to do for the day that they would have to tend to. Martin of course had his responsibilities as Mayor of Moon Lake and Melissa had her work as Moon Lake's tech support officer and the head of Stovall Systems.
++++++++++++++++++++++
The ride into school was rather quiet, but it did carry some happy hopes on Julie's part as she sat in the passenger seat beside her mother as she drove them toward the high school. As they rode along, Julie could see Ben Twist's car in front of the Twist house and with Nate and Eric both headed toward it. It raised some happy hopes as it would mean that she would get a real chance to see Eric before classes started. That left her with a smile that Melissa noticed as she drove along and that made her smile, as Melissa Stovall hoped that her daughter wouldn't have to wait for her one true love for as long as she had "made" Martin wait.
Melissa eventually pulled up into the roadway in front of the high school and pulled to a halt so that Julie could get out. Julie quickly did so and waved to her mother after shutting the door. Melissa smiled back at Julie and pulled away before the school busses arrived. Julie watched her mother's car pull away and moved toward the front steps of the high school where she intended to wait for Eric's arrival at the school. She didn't have to wait too long, as Ben Twist drove his car to the student parking lot that was on a side of the building. Shortly after his arrival, he and his passengers made their wat toward the front of the high school where Julie was waiting.
Eric seemed to be walking slowly behind his older brother Nate and Nate's boyfriend Alex Ramsey with Ben in the lead of their walk along the sidewalk in front of the high school building. Nate occasionally looked back to his brother as they walked, but Julie couldn't hear if Nate Anderson said anything and while Eric might have been walking slowly and not looking entirely upbeat, that really didn't register with her. She was just happy to see him with some time to talk with him before they would have to go their separate ways for their respective morning classes and assumed that he'd probably been busy with homework or something else.
"Eric!" Julie called happily and dashed down the steps, dodging other students on their way into the building to start their day.
Eric did look up as he walked, and Julie could see that he actually looked rather tired, though after a moment he did seem to give a small smile, likely when he saw her smile. She rushed up to him and happily hugged him there on the sidewalk in front of the high school.
"Sorry I couldn't Skype longer," Julie said to him as they hugged for a few moments, "the assignment that Arthur and I had to work on proved a bit more difficult than I expected."
"I'm sure," Eric answered, though his voice was a bit distant and Julie actually thought he sounded nervous which made her frown.
While she knew that Eric was the last member of his family to join Moon Lake's were society and took the longest to adjust to it, though that was mostly due to the fact that his father had been clawed by a werefox that wanted him and couldn't take "no" for an answer and that with him becoming a werefox, Eric's mother HAD to become a were of some type if they were to stay together which put the Andersons through a lot of drama when they first moved to Moon Lake. But once he did get used to things, Eric not only adapted but adapted very well. And after Eric had declared his love for her and Julie explained to him on how rapidly the effects of how weremer courtship was affecting both of them and he accepted that in a very romantic moment, Eric had always seemed to be very happy with things. To Julie it represented every fairy tale love story with Eric playing the role of the heroic and noble prince. This nervous sounding Eric wasn't the Eric she'd really been getting to know since he became a weremer.
"Eric... are you okay?" Julie asked, "You don't look good."